I know this has been discussed before, but i am a little uncertain about RAID 10 and if this is what I should choose?

Do NOT want to use RAID 5 or anything involving parity as my Thinkserver RAID 500 LSI isnt really good for it. Great for RAID 0, 1 AND 10 though.

I have 2x250GB SSD for the Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OS in RAID 1 mirror.

I have 4 2TB WD Black drives for DATA storage which will involve client backups via the OS and for data storage sharing.

Want redundancy.

Should i just set 2 of the drives as RAID 1 for virtual drive 2TB data storage. And 2 of drives for another virtual drive 2TB data storage? So 2 seperate volumes.

Or make 1 big RAID 10 virtual drive storage? I dont want only 2TB virtual drive though with the other 3 as fault tolerant. Would want 4TB useable, not just 2TB. I am a lityle worried about tge striping like RAID 0 uses even though the set it mirrored. I am reading RAID 10 is still preferred over RAID 1?

Ok, if I set up the (4) 2TB each spinning disks as RAID 10, my USEABLE storage will be 4TB. (For simplicity, rounding to 4TB, I know it will be slightly less).

Correct. One Big RAID 10 gives you the best usage of your available space. A single pool of 4TB is more efficient than two pools of 2TB each. Even though the total size is the same, the amount that you can effectively use is smaller. So RAID 10 gives you the best possible use of the available space while retaining protection against failures.

SSDs for an OS are a bit of a waste, you aren't going to see any speed benefits on server operation. Yes they are great for desktop/laptops but you would be as well saving the money and building one big RAID 10

The WD Black drives aren't best suited to this, the RED or RED Pro would be better as they have TLER

Ok, if I set up the (4) 2TB each spinning disks as RAID 10, my USEABLE storage will be 4TB. (For simplicity, rounding to 4TB, I know it will be slightly less).

If I set up the (4) 2TB into (2) separate virtual drives via RAID 1 each, I get 4TB useable storage.

If I set up all (4) 2TB as (1) virtual drive, I only get 2TB with (3) extra drives for redundancy, I do NOT want this obviously.

Is there a "reason" why (1) big virtual drive is preferred over (2) virtual drives? I tried a REBUILD for testing... it took FOREVER... so peroanlly, the smaller the drives and virutla drive the better... as long as all of holds what we need. I.e. I could have easily chose 4TB versus 2TB drives... but 2TB seems a nice sweet spot... 1TB not so much...4 or 6 etc, seems would take a lifetime to rebuild.

The other drawback I've read is that if using RAID 10, I have to have (2) drives ready versus 1 when a drive fails? I am not so sure about that, so any clarification may help. I guess I may leaning more towards 2 RAID 1 virtual drives versus 1 big 1 via RAID 10...but then again... I hear GO RAID 10 all day long ...but not understanding the REAL reason why?

Thank you all for the help...much appreciated.

PS, as far as Virtualizing, Black drives versus Red (no!), Red Pro (yes!)drives, (TLR yes!) I have been round and round with all that already and this is just a small office physical server for my business... I've settled on my decision as I really must at this point. All the drives were already purchased and we have great rotating external drives, online (offsite) and blu-ray backups in place. That's all much more important than worrying myself to death if I purchased a Black or Red NAS drive or whatever...no matter what you buy, eventually they will all end up failing. I could use total garbage hard drives and be fine... as long I have a backup plan in place. One can really drive themselves 6 foot deep worrying over every little thing these days. Which is probably why I am asking about RAID 10! ha!

Thank you for the great advice anyways if I haven't known about it before..would be very helpful...so thank you.

If I set up all (4) 2TB as (1) virtual drive, I only get 2TB with (3) extra drives for redundancy, I do NOT want this obviously.

You are using lots of weird terms here. This is four drives in RAID 1. There is no virtual drive. This is just a four disk RAID 1 array. It's possible, of course, but no one would ever do this. No one. It's crazy. Even Wall St. firms don't do triple mirroring let alone quadruple. You are at 160,000 years or more between failures on normal RAID 1. That's longer than human history. Going to triple mirroring takes you towards millions of years between failures!! You just don't need that.

Ok, if I set up the (4) 2TB each spinning disks as RAID 10, my USEABLE storage will be 4TB. (For simplicity, rounding to 4TB, I know it will be slightly less).

Correct. One Big RAID 10 gives you the best usage of your available space. A single pool of 4TB is more efficient than two pools of 2TB each. Even though the total size is the same, the amount that you can effectively use is smaller. So RAID 10 gives you the best possible use of the available space while retaining protection against failures.

Is there a "reason" why (1) big virtual drive is preferred over (2) virtual drives? I tried a REBUILD for testing... it took FOREVER... so peroanlly, the smaller the drives and virutla drive the better... as long as all of holds what we need. I.e. I could have easily chose 4TB versus 2TB drives... but 2TB seems a nice sweet spot... 1TB not so much...4 or 6 etc, seems would take a lifetime to rebuild.

You want one array versus two because it is twice as fast for normal operations and gives you better usable capacity.

Rebuilds are literally identical between RAID 1 and RAID 10 in this case. Literally exactly the same. Maybe you tested with RAID 6 which would give you the same capacity as RAID 10 but rebuilds will be extremely slow.

The other drawback I've read is that if using RAID 10, I have to have (2) drives ready versus 1 when a drive fails? I am not so sure about that, so any clarification may help. I guess I may leaning more towards 2 RAID 1 virtual drives versus 1 big 1 via RAID 10...but then again... I hear GO RAID 10 all day long ...but not understanding the REAL reason why?

There are no downsides to RAID 10 here. Did you read the papers that I provided? It should all be covered there. RAID 10 is faster, easier and you get better use of your capacity.

RAID 10 is just a stripe of RAID 1s. It's just a much more efficient way to use the RAID 1s underneath.

If you are even remotely considering the two RAID 1s it means you don't understand what RAID 10 is. The advantages are quite big and the disadvantages don't exist.

I can give you several reasons (and have) why going RAID 1 is "bad" in comparison. You want to know why to consider RAID 10, but you've not provided any reason to break best practice and use two RAID 1s. Why are you wanting to do that given that there are no advantages? Reverse your logic to expose the flaw.

(Technically two RAID 1s are marginally safer than the RAID 10, but this should not be considered at all as the RAID 10 is so dramatically safe that it is pointless to try to get "safer." )

PS, as far as Virtualizing, Black drives versus Red (no!), Red Pro (yes!)drives, (TLR yes!) I have been round and round with all that already and this is just a small office physical server for my business... I've settled on my decision as I really must at this point. All the drives were already purchased and we have great rotating external drives, online (offsite) and blu-ray backups in place. That's all much more important than worrying myself to death if I purchased a Black or Red NAS drive or whatever...no matter what you buy, eventually they will all end up failing. I could use total garbage hard drives and be fine... as long I have a backup plan in place. One can really drive themselves 6 foot deep worrying over every little thing these days. Which is probably why I am asking about RAID 10! ha!

Yes, all of those drives are fine. In RAID 10 Red, Black, Red Pro are all excellent. Red has TLER, that's its whole point. No reason to avoid Red drives except for performance. They are slow but very good. Black are okay but lack TLER.

I totally understand what you are saying. I guess my biggest thing about RAID 10 is the "Striping"... you know.. ...the risks of RAID 0... but since the sets are mirrored...it's good... as long as you don't lose 2 identical sets of stripes. But I do understand, your chances are better using RAID 10 and making 1 large set versus 2 smaller sets. I guess the rebuild won't be so bad even with a larger set since merely just mirrored. Yeah, my raid card isn't good for parity..and personally (in my case) just want to stay away from that even if you gain more space etc.

I was referring to the drive sets as VIRTUAL since MegaRAID was referring to them that way. I guess you could refer to them as different terminology.

I'll go with RAID 10. I think I was confusing some aspects of other RAID types etc.... still cannot find where I read where 10 required (2) drives in case of a failure... maybe I mixed it up with another RAID type. But no matter, I'll take this excellent RAID 10 advice.

Thank you again... and thank you for breaking it all down even though you really didn't have to personally do that, so thanks for your help and everyone else's excellent help.

I guess the rebuild won't be so bad even with a larger set since merely just mirrored. Yeah, my raid card isn't good for parity..and personally (in my case) just want to stay away from that even if you gain more space etc.

Don't forget, a rebuild on a RAID 10 is still a disk copy from one drive of the mirrored pair to the other. It will be exactly as fast as rebuilding a RAID 1. The only time rebuilding striped RAID is slow is if you're using parity RAID (RAID 5 or 6.)

At some point you have to have the physical hardware. This requires an OS of some sort, even if that OS is nothing more than a hyper-visor.

Did you read the articles? Hypervisors are not OSes. Yes, of course there is something physical. And the thing you put on that is a hypervisor. Using a hypervisor is called virtualization. No OS ever on physical boxes. OSes only go on hypervisors. Hypervisors never on anything but physical.

I am using Essentials R2. So no go for Hypervisor. I am fine with a physical server and kinda where I am at in my situation. (if anything, I need a secondary AD DC) I don't see any trouble going this route (in my situation)... physical servers have been around for a long time and still are. Not everyone is virtualizing yet, especially small business like me...yeah pure awesome for large corporations etc, hell...eventually everything will be reduced down from a server room to a thumb drive size anyways.). Seems to me, being new to the Server realm as up to a few months ago... Virtualization is the way to go for a lot of things these days...but I have plenty of reading on that. And these are things I don't need to tell you, you already know...I can definitely tell you are top notch in this arena. ; ) (among many here also)

Eh? I didn't see anything in the license that prevents you from running it on ESXi (or Hyper-V Server, for that matter.) I was anti-virtualization in my last company (sole IT guy) and I realize now how much easier life is when virtualized. Snapshots, fast and easy backups, portability between servers, better server utilization meaning fewer physical machines to replace/maintain/repair. The only physical servers I have left are those that have specific hardware (PCI card/USB devices) that I physically cannot virtualize.

I've always been under the assumption this was a Essentials limitation.

Says NO Hyper-V. So I figured if I ever needed virtualization, had ESXi, VMware or VirtualBox.

I know Virtualization is all the hype and know it's great for managing LOTS of clients / servers... but figured it was overkill personally for me. I will read up on it more. Lots of aspects to SERVERS...so still in the learning process...got a lot of it down, but haven't hit everything yet... VM is something I didn't want or think I had to "worry" about...there's enough to worry about already. I've come a long ways after a few months of diving into this server realm. I've been into computers since the 80's, but never had a need for server knowledge until now. It's just a matter of learning.

I'll check out more on VM when I get more time. I've really got to get this server going though. Thanks for the links for reading.

I know Virtualization is all the hype and know it's great for managing LOTS of clients / servers... but figured it was overkill personally for me.

It's not hype in the least and there is nothing with virtualization that suggests it is for volume or for scale. VIrtualization applies equally to servers and environments of all sizes. Everything should be virtualized. Running a physical box is "overkill" in that it is too much effort and too much risk to be taking on. Virtualization makes things easier, safer and protects you.